This delicious beef curry and rice features wonderful warm spices like ginger, cinnamon, clove and bay, together with fall-apart tender beef chunks.
This warm-spiced beef curry cooks up beef that is fork-tender, with a lovely sauce, full of warm spices like ginger, cinnamon, clove and bay. The sauce also has tomatoes and coconut milk. Although it has coconut milk in it (optional, you can use regular milk), it isn’t dominant, like in a Thai curry. It is also mildly curry spiced, which is how I prefer my curries.
This curry is a great dish to adjust to your taste though, by adding more or less of any of the spices or chutney (or up the crushed red pepper, if you’d like a bit more heat). Any way you make it, this is a warm and comforting dish.
Ingredients and substitutions
A few notes about the key ingredients …
Beef – stewing beef is just fine for this beef curry. Alternately, you could cut a whole steak into cubes.
Coconut Milk – if you don’t have coconut milk on hand, you can substitute milk.
Major Grey Chutney – this chutney is easily available these days, in with the Indian sauces.
Mild Curry Powder – I prefer to use mild curry powder, but you can use any curry powder you have or prefer.
Recipe tips!
- I think you could very easily make this curry in a slow-cooker as well. I’d just brown the meat separately, then transfer it into the slow cooker with the sauce ingredients. Let it cook for about 4 hours on HIGH or up to 8 hours on LOW. Take the lid off and simmer uncovered for a bit at the end, if needed to thicken the sauce a bit.
How to serve this beef curry
I love to serve this beef curry with Basmati rice and a green vegetable.
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Get the Recipe: Beef Curry and Rice
Ingredients
- 2 lbs boneless stewing beef, well trimmed, cut into 1-inch pieces
- 3 Tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
- 2 large onions, sliced
- 6 whole cloves, can use ground cloves – about 1/4 tsp.
- 2 large garlic cloves, chopped
- 2 cinnamon sticks, or 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
- 1 1/2 cups coconut milk, or whole milk or a combination of both
- 28 oz can whole peeled tomatoes, with juice (or drained and use 1 cup-ish beef broth instead of the tomato juices)
- 3 Tablespoons Major Grey chutney
- 3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 2 Tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger, could use ground – about 1/4 tsp.
- 2-3 teaspoon mild curry powder, plus more, to taste
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- Hot cooked Basmati rice, for serving
Instructions
- Pat beef dry and sprinkle with salt and pepper. In a heavy, large pot over medium-high heat, heat 2 Tbsp. of the oil. Add about 1/3 of the meat to the pan (*to get a good browning on your meat, don't crowd your pan. There should be space around each piece). Brown the meat on all sides and remove to a plate, repeating with 2 more batches, about 5 minutes per batch.
- Heat the remaining 1 Tbsp. oil in the same pot over medium-high heat. Add the onions and sauté until tender and brown, about 7 minutes.
- Return beef to pot. Add the cloves, garlic, cinnamon sticks, bay leaf and dried red pepper to pot. Stir for 1 minute to combine and release the flavours from the spices. Stir in the coconut milk, tomatoes, chutney, lemon juice, ginger, curry powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat, cover and simmer on low heat, until beef is tender, stirring occasionally, about 2 hours.
- Once meat is tender, uncover, increase heat to medium-low and allow to simmer, uncovered until the juices are thickened thickened. Taste and adjust seasonings to taste (you might want to add a bit more salt, some freshly ground pepper and/or a bit more curry powder or other spice, to taste).
- Serve over or alongside rice.
Notes
More beef recipes to love!
Hi! I’m Jennifer, a home cook schooled by trial and error and almost 40 years of getting dinner on the table! I love to share my favourite recipes, both old and new, together with lots of tips and tricks to hopefully help make your home cooking enjoyable, stress free, rewarding and of course, delicious!
Hi Jackie
Can I use chill flakes instead of red pepper?
Chili flakes would be the same as crushed red pepper (same thing, just a different name :)
Would it be okay to omit the chutney or would it affect the finished recipe too much? Thanks..
Hi Jackie and it would be fine to skip the chutney (and it will still be a nice curry :). If you happen to have some apricot or peach jam in the fridge, you can add a Tbsp of that if you like, which will give a little bit of that fruit note that the chutney does. Enjoy!
Thanks for the quick reply.
Hi Jennifer
Love curry, made it a couple of days ago, I think I would leave out the cinnamon stick, use the powder, it seemed to take over, I used organic beef, grain feed, simmered for two hours but I think I could have done an hour, my beef was, how do I describe it, like when you marinated something too long and it’s mealy, over done but still taste good😕
I have a summer place in Muskoka, so beautiful, was thinking about moving full time, not sure about the winters but with your receipts maybe I could, thank you for sharing.
Sherri
Collingwood